India election vote count shows Modi alliance heading to majority but no landslide

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alliance was winning a majority of seats in early vote counting trends in the general election on Tuesday, but well short of the landslide predicted in exit polls, TV channels showed.

BJP was in first place on 38.68 per cent with half of votes counted, national election commission data showed.

The elections for the 18th Lok Sabha, spanning seven phases between April 19 and June 1, amid a scorching heatwave, was finally coming to a close today, as the ballots are counted.

• BJP-led bloc, called the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), is leading with 294 seats at over 50pc of the vote count
• BJP was hoping its alliance would win at least 400 out of the 543 up for grabs
• Congress-led alliance, INDIA, has defied predictions and has so far secured 191 seats
• Indian stock markets fall nearly 5pc due to uncertainty

Based on trends released by the Indian election commission, according to The Wire, the Bharatiya Janata Party was leading in 246 seats, the Congress in 96, Samajwadi Party in 33, Trinamool Congress in 29, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in 21, Telugu Desam Party in 16 as of 4 pm India Standard Time.

In terms of alliances, the BJP’s National Democratic Alliance is leading with 293 seats, above the 272 needed for a lower house parliamentary majority, and the opposition INDIA bloc, led by Rahul Gandhi’s Congress Party, in 229.

Earlier, when only about 10pc-15pc of the total votes had been counted, the opposition INDIA alliance was leading in over 200 seats, higher than expected.

Trends also showed Modi leading first, then trailing and leading again in his seat in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi.

The early see-saw trends unnerved markets with stocks falling steeply. The NIFTY 50 and the S&P BSE Sensex were both down over 2 per cent at 5am GMT. The Indian rupee also fell against the dollar and benchmark bond yields were up.

The markets had soared on Monday after exit polls on June 1 projected Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would register a big victory, with its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) seen getting a two-thirds majority and more.

The first votes counted were postal ballots, which are paper ballots, mostly cast by troops serving outside their home constituencies or officials away from home on election duty. This year, postal votes were also offered to voters over 85 years of age and people with disabilities to allow them to vote from home.

Counting is expected to last several hours as the large majority of votes polled in electronic voting machines or EVMs are taken up after the first 30 minutes of counting postal ballots.

“These are very early trends, we are going to see better results as the day progresses,” Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera said.

TV exit polls broadcast after voting ended on June 1 projected a big win for Modi, but exit polls have often got election outcomes wrong in India. Nearly one billion people were registered to vote, of which 642 million turned out.

Modi said at the weekend he was confident that “the people of India have voted in record numbers” to re-elect his government, a decade after he first became prime minister.

‘400 paar’ dream shattered?

Analysts say that despite the BJP’s “roaring” the “400 paar” slogan, the “persisting depression in demand in the hinterland, where most Indian voters live, could have cast a shadow” on Modi’s success, according to the Economic Times.

Other factors may also have come into play: a united opposition comprising large and small opposition putting aside their differences to form the INDIA bloc, which appears to have garnered minority votes, could have made a difference, according to the analysis.

Furthermore, Congress’s Rahul Gandhi had reportedly made tempting offers — like large cash handouts — to the marginalised and various caste groups.

Vitriolic campaign

Observers believe his appeals to growing Hindu nationalist sentiment will give him a third term in power.

Modi’s opponents have struggled to counter the campaign juggernaut of his BJP, and have been hamstrung by infighting and what they say are politically motivated criminal cases aimed at hobbling challengers.

US think tank Freedom House said this year that the BJP had “increasingly used government institutions to target political opponents”.

Investors have already cheered the prospects of another Modi term, expecting it to deliver further years of strong economic growth and pro-business reforms, while a possible two-thirds majority in parliament could allow major changes to the constitution, rivals and critics fear.

“The next government’s main task will be to set India on the path of getting rich before it ages,” the Times of India newspaper said in an editorial on Tuesday, referring to the young, working age population in the world’s most populous nation. “The clock’s ticking.”

On Sunday, Arvind Kejriwal, chief minister of the capital Delhi and a key leader in an alliance formed to compete against Modi, returned to jail.

Kejriwal, 55, was detained in March over a long-running corruption probe, but was later released and allowed to campaign as long as he returned to custody once voting ended.

“When power becomes dictatorship, then jail becomes a responsibility,” Kejriwal said before surrendering himself, vowing to continue “fighting” from behind bars.

In the lead-up to the election, many of the 200m-plus Muslim minority grew increasingly uneasy about their futures and their community’s place in the constitutionally secular country.

Modi himself made a number of strident comments about Muslims on the campaign trail, referring to them as “infiltrators”.

Logistics of vote count

The polls were staggering in their size and logistical complexity, with voters casting their ballots in megacities New Delhi and Mumbai, as well as in sparsely populated forest areas and in the high-altitude territory of Kashmir.

Votes were cast on electronic voting machines, so the tally will likely be rapid, with results expected within hours.

Counting began on Tuesday morning in key centres in each state, with the data fed into computers.

“People should know about the strength of Indian democracy”, chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar said on Monday, vowing there was a “robust counting process in place”.

India’s major TV networks will have reporters outside each counting centre, competing to flash results for each of the 543 elected seats in the lower house of parliament.

In past years, key trends have been clear by mid-afternoon with losers conceding defeat, even though full and final results may only come late on Tuesday night.

“Mandate with destiny”, the headline of the Hindustan Times read on Tuesday. Celebrations are expected at the headquarters of Modi’s BJP if the results reflect exit poll predictions.

The winning post is a simple majority of 272 seats, and the BJP won 303 at the last polls in 2019.

Heatwave voting

Election chief Kumar on Monday proclaimed the 642m votes cast a “world record”.

But based on the commission’s figure of an electorate of 968m, turnout came to 66.3 per cent, down roughly one percentage point from 67.4pc in the last polls in 2019.

Final voter data is yet to be released as repolling took place in two stations in West Bengal state on Monday.

Analysts have partly blamed the lower turnout on a searing heatwave across northern India, with temperatures in excess of 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit).

At least 33 polling staff died from heatstroke on Saturday in Uttar Pradesh state alone, where temperatures hit 46.9°C (116.4°F).

Polling should have been scheduled to end a month earlier, Kumar acknowledged. “We should not have done it in so much heat”, he said.